[BubbaWPB]

OK, Lee, I'm reading your articles about feeding fish. Generally I can't argue with your points. I'm just having a little difficulty getting on the right track. Please pardon my mixture of humor and real concern. I can't seem to help myself. Maybe I should put the attempts at humor in Comic font (yes, that’s the real name of it)....

I've got the dogs trained to eat out of their own bowls and not to eat out of someone else's, but I'm having difficulty training the fish not to eat the “wrong” food. I have a mixed population of herbivores, omnivores, and carnivores/planktivores (tangs, wrasses, oscellaris clownfish, and anthias). I read your posting this morning about the "Pig" tang. Fortunately, I'd already increased the algae feedings to my tanks. I hope dried Sea Veggies™ is adequate - they seem to love them. I can't find an organic fish food supermarket, so I'm hoping that there are not artifical hormones or genetically altered seaweed strains in this brand of product. I alternate Palmaria plamata (red), Porphyra umbilicalis (purple), and Porphyra yezoensis (green). Hopefully this mixture will be adequate to get them the nutrition they need. I haven’t found gold-colored dried algae to feed them yet though. Do you have any other additions/types of seaweed to recommend to the herbivore diet, or is this an adequate mix?

While your articles about feeding entire organisms were tossing about in my convoluted mind last night, I was having dinner with friends. They served (among some terrestrial victuals) whole, steamed lobster. Of course, there was nothing left of the tail meat and claw meat, but there were a few very large cephalothoraces (“heads”) left brimming with fatty, not-tail-meat parts. I couldn’t seem to let all this nutritious free food go to waste, so I brought one home. I thought about tossing the entire head into the food processor, but for some reason, I stopped before doing so. (I was imagining what my nice white aragonite sand would look like with little red chips of lobster shell on top – if the blade in the food processor didn’t break.) Instead, I scouped some of the fatty guts out, chopped them finely, and fed them to the “pigs,” thinking that they would benefit from the nice, natural marine critter fat in their diet.

Other than suddenly and completely stopping all foam production in my skimmers, I’m concerned about other, more subtle problems of doing this. After beating around the bush, here is the question: “Would lobster innards be a “bad” treat for the pigs?” A more profound question that is better addressed elsewhere, “Why do I do things first, and ask advice later?”

[leebca]

Bubba (I always liked that name!)

I think your choice of greens is way above average. Great job. If you want to mix and match manufacturers/providers, you alternate using Seaweed Selects, and even bulk sheets I find sold on eBay. There is also brown algae I would include now and then.

My fish will pass up on some foods. If they are nutritionally satisfied, the carnivores won't touch the vegetables I put in the tank, and the herbivores will eat some meaty products and swim away (to their algae clip) shortly after feeding begins. But both carnivore and herbivore will eat omnivore food without much hesitation (and that's okay ).

As to your choice of putting carts before the horses, you'll have to take that up with your Maker.

Cooked lobster would not be a good choice. If you're talking raw, it would be good. But carnivore and omnivore fishes usually expect the package rather than guts and innards floating about the aquarium. In one respect that makes a raw shucked clam ideal. The meat and guts tend to stay in the shell and the fish are used to diving down on the shell.

If you have raw lobster head in the future, crack the shell so it splits in places (but don't pull it apart), freeze it for no less than 48 hours, thaw it, secure it (rubberband) to a rock to be sure it sinks, and sink it for a few hours. The fish will pick at their favorite parts AND 'enjoy' trying to get at in through the split shell. I do the same with raw marine shrimp heads. Next time you put 'shrimp on the barbie' buy whole shrimp and decapitate them. Freeze them and thaw some now and then for an occasional feeding.

I find that my cleaner and other shrimp come dashing forward for the treat first and begin ripping at it. They inadvertently make some small meaty pieces which some timid fish hang around to gobble up. The 'bull dozer fish' (assertive carnivores) move in after the shrimps. After they are full, the next wave comes in. For this reason you have to judge the right quantity to put in so as not to 'frustrate' your marine specimens. Each has to have a chance at deciding if it wants it or not. In such scenarios, my herbivores come over to see the cause of the commotion, but they leave the food alone.

Levity is fine. I have trouble refraining from using it myself. It gets me into trouble, especially when in the written form where you can't look at my face. I can get so deep with it that it sometimes comes across like a Don Rickles insult!

I like some thread titles the best: How Can I Save my Fish? [Take it to church]. How Can I Stop Marine Ich? [Kill the fish.] You get the idea.

[BubbaWPB]

OK, now I'll get sort of tangential to the original topic, but stick with the "I'm cheap" theme (I can't stand it when they put normal stuff in a little bottle and sell it for 40 times the price at a LFS, just because the label says it's for fish/aquarium - e.g. $30 tubes of garlic paste and baking soda at $12 for 6 oz.)

There are about half a bazillion types of dried algae in the Japanese section of the Asian supermarket. Some of them are toasted, roasted, flavored, etc. and I know to keep those in the kitchen and out of my tank. I'm a bit confused though on my fishes' turning up their noses at some of them. Nori, for example.... the stuff looks exactly the same as Sea Veggies™, down to the perforations for making different types of sushi - my tangs ignore the sushi nori and devour the Sea Veggies ravenously. Likewise, they don't want anything to do with wakame or konbu (kelp). I was thinking that maybe these are cold water algaes and the fish prefer more tropical victuals.

Any clues on what's going on? (other than having picky tangs).

[leebca]

You've got me there.

I've tried Nori from various packagers/suppliers. It seems to be 'crispy.' I don't know/understand why. Could it have been heated at some time? Maybe it has a 'smell' about it.

Fishes have more senses than humans do. They can sense chemicals, electrical impulses and fine vibrations we can't sense through our 5 senses. Assuming the Nori isn't vibrating nor sending electrical impulses then one might assume it is giving off a chemical the repels or offend the senses of the fish. That could be anything as simple as a 'cooked' smell to chemical additives, or processing smells that humans can't/don't detect.

If your tangs are getting the good foods, they will instinctively pass up the marginal foods.

I agree with you about costs. I get bulk green algae sheets on eBay and that was about the best I could do for green.

I've recommended people to stay away from Nori and the human products. It's not that it's bad; it's just that it's questionable.

[BubbaWPB]

Originally Posted by leebca

I've recommended people to stay away from Nori and the human products. It's not that it's bad; it's just that it's questionable.

...and it helps to know that anything in the Japanese section that has "aji" in the name is usually flavored with all sorts of tasty things (to humans, not fish)... and who knows if it's toased? The American brands of seaweed at the health food store (probably produced in the same factory as the Japanese brands) have English lables but are just like the products at the LFS - 40 times the price for a small portion of the same stuff.

I think I'll stick to Sea Veggies for now.... thanks for your advice.